Jan 1, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com
You (and everyone else saying similar things) have not convinced me on a couple of points which I think the analysis needs to address.
Firstly, the very problematic concept of "unvaccinated". This aggregates the recovered and the immune naive (not having been infected with the virus at all). The proportion between these two categories has changed between the two waves and you need to take account of this.
Secondly, the comparison you make ignores the fact that the vaccinated are more likely not to have had delta. The fact that they are now getting omicron at increased rates may simply reflect this fact. So the vaccine has allowed some of them to "swap" omicron for delta, which would be a good thing. This is not evidence of OAS and, honestly, I don't want to be impolite, but I think it is a sloppy way to reason.
Lastly, I have yet to see analysis from anyone which recognizes that the hospitalized with omicron in SA are in most cases incidental, that the reduced severity of omicron makes further underdetection highly likely and that relative to the likely population incidence, a higher proportion of detected cases is likely to have been detected in a hospital setting where people are tested systematically. In other words, there is a base rate fallacy.
These are some quick thoughts off the top of my head and I would be interested in your reaction. I am not expecting epidemic new variants personally. I do agree with everyone who has made this point that on a precautionary basis the vaccine policy has been all wrong and we should have relied much more on natural immunity in the healthy and not vulnerable part of the population. I don't think anyone has yet shown OAS or ADE. In fact, Geert vanden Bossche, who has very much warned of this, seemed to be quite upbeat recently that omicron was in fact solliciting a broad spectrum immune response in the vaccinated as well. See https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/like-a-virgin-untouched-forever
Jan 2, 2022·edited Jan 2, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com
It would be great if we could separate the recovereds from the never-before-infecteds. I would say both from the unvaxxed and from the vaxxed.
Comparing unvaxxed vs vaxxed only for those who were never-before-infected, would be partic interesting. Although increasingly hard to find these people esp after omoronic wave!
This is a great article, although possibly age confounding will reveal that the bad effects of the vaccine are not quite as large.
But still we are living through the exciting and predicted time of vaccine failure and I thank you for exposing a part of this story.
You (and everyone else saying similar things) have not convinced me on a couple of points which I think the analysis needs to address.
Firstly, the very problematic concept of "unvaccinated". This aggregates the recovered and the immune naive (not having been infected with the virus at all). The proportion between these two categories has changed between the two waves and you need to take account of this.
Secondly, the comparison you make ignores the fact that the vaccinated are more likely not to have had delta. The fact that they are now getting omicron at increased rates may simply reflect this fact. So the vaccine has allowed some of them to "swap" omicron for delta, which would be a good thing. This is not evidence of OAS and, honestly, I don't want to be impolite, but I think it is a sloppy way to reason.
Lastly, I have yet to see analysis from anyone which recognizes that the hospitalized with omicron in SA are in most cases incidental, that the reduced severity of omicron makes further underdetection highly likely and that relative to the likely population incidence, a higher proportion of detected cases is likely to have been detected in a hospital setting where people are tested systematically. In other words, there is a base rate fallacy.
These are some quick thoughts off the top of my head and I would be interested in your reaction. I am not expecting epidemic new variants personally. I do agree with everyone who has made this point that on a precautionary basis the vaccine policy has been all wrong and we should have relied much more on natural immunity in the healthy and not vulnerable part of the population. I don't think anyone has yet shown OAS or ADE. In fact, Geert vanden Bossche, who has very much warned of this, seemed to be quite upbeat recently that omicron was in fact solliciting a broad spectrum immune response in the vaccinated as well. See https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/like-a-virgin-untouched-forever
It would be great if we could separate the recovereds from the never-before-infecteds. I would say both from the unvaxxed and from the vaxxed.
Comparing unvaxxed vs vaxxed only for those who were never-before-infected, would be partic interesting. Although increasingly hard to find these people esp after omoronic wave!
You might find this interesting as a step back out of trees.
DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.abl5842
https://github.com/Maximilian3141/isr_detailed_vacc_case_data/blob/main/isr_detail_v2.ipynb